• WallsToTheBalls@lemmynsfw.com
      12·
      3 days ago

      This is a silly take imo. The people out there don’t care if the government knows they’re against them. They want the government to know, that’s the entire point.

      In this age of surveillance there is no true hiding, so we fight in the light.

      I’m partially convinced the “don’t take your phone to protests, wear black block, go armed…” etc rhetoric is almost exclusively from people who have never been to a protest or taken part in an organizing.

      • stickly@lemmy.world
        9·
        3 days ago

        First, I think it’s stupid in general that we all think it’s fine to record people in public and upload their image so that it can be shared in perpetuity, no matter the setting.

        Second, just because we live in a dystopian surveillance state doesn’t mean we should shrug and keep feeding the beast. If a state actor wants to track movements from 3 miles away and cross reference that footage with some other shadowy data then make them do that. It costs them time, resources and political capital that could be spent elsewhere. Don’t carry their water by donating data.

        Third, there’s more malicious things that can be done with your image than just putting you on a list. Suddenly you get dragged into court and these close shots of you at a protest have been leveraged to inject you into a bloody riot or any other concocted scenario. A state actor has a ton of visual data but there’s no guarantee they have fresh, high resolution content on any given person (think anything that might have changed since your last photo ID: facial hair, thinning hair, scars, etc…).

        Fourth, building off the last point, the state actor is not the only thing that matters in our threat model. Maybe some random xitter shitbag decides to use Grok to inject you into CSAM or some shit. That stuff doesn’t need to hold up in a court of law to ruin your life.

        Even worse the MAGA nut from down the road recognizes someone and decides to take vigilante justice into his own hands. Hell, he might even be wrong and now some third party is dead for no reason.

        I’m not saying that everyone needs to go black block to protests, I think there’s a ton of power in showing support openly to your neighbors and allies. But the message should be in the solidarity of the crowd and not the identities of the people. If you really want to shout “I’m not afraid of you” to the state then I’ve got good news: you can call up your senator or the Whitehouse right now from the comfort of your home!

        But until we all can chill on the self doxxing then I probably wouldn’t show up anywhere sensitive without taking the basic steps to protect my privacy.

      • PoopingCough@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        3 days ago

        Yeah all that is kind of a moot point anyway when there’s 15 flock cameras tracking you all the way from home to protest location.

        But i also think it depends on the aims of a protest. If it’s to gather a large crowd and march/chant/just be a presence I don’t think worrying about being identified is with too much since like you said it’s kind of the point. If there goal is a little more subsersive I can see taking those precautions. I’ve recently read in to a bit of the Hong Kong protests and one of the things they did that was effective was to constantly group up and erect barricades etc and then sort of disband and meet up elsewhere. So the sort of “good trouble” that people might feel the need to cause in the near future as things progress could definitely require a bit more OpSec.